An Interview with Halestorm
House of Blues, Anaheim, California 2/6/06
By Charlie Steffens, aka Gnarly Charlie
Halestorm is a band that was raised on a musical diet of Vanilla Fudge and The Beatles, yet it's laughable that each member of the group was born after Def Leppard's Pyromania and Michael Jackson's Thriller dominated the charts. There is likeability in the sound of Halestorm's music and in each of these young rockers' offstage personalities.
I had the privilege of seeing Halestorm play a very short but amazing set prior to our interview. I'll confess to you that prior to their show I wasn't as excited as I would be when I get to see a band that I'm more acquainted with; a band who has that “proven track record” going for them. I had a mindset that was a lot like that person you see at a show with his arms crossed while the opening band is playing at their very best for the twenty-five minutes they're given to perform (and earn a few new fans). So I may have been there to see Shinedown, but I got my head rocked right that night by a four-piece band of hippie-looking kids from Pennsylvania, fronted by a beautiful girl strapped with a guitar, singing her ass off with a voice that was like something I had never experienced. Lzzy Hale will be noticed soon as a singer who has it all - depth, range, volume, soul and the indescribable voice. The band played with exuberance, withholding nothing and giving everything of themselves to strangers... strangers whom Halestorm loves like family. This band is the real deal.
After the show I lost any sense of professionalism in the band's van while we did this interview. It was too much fun to just ask the generic journalistic questions, so I eased back and we talked, laughed and after our chat was over I was really glad I showed up that night.
Halestorm is:
Lzzy Hale - vocals, guitar
Joe Hottinger - guitar, vocals
Josh Smith - bass, vocals
Arejay - drums
AAM: Okay, Halestorm, let me ID everybody here. Would each of you say a little about yourself to start it off?
Josh: My name is Josh, I'm the bass player in Halestorm, I've been in about 2 years - makes me the new guy.
(Applause from all.)
Joe: I'm Joe. I play guitar...
Lzzy: He likes long walks on the beach...
AAM: Do you like spooning?
AAM: It's lonely on the road.
Josh: He likes to be the little spoon.
Joe: I do. I like to be held... tight.
AAM: That makes for better guitar leads.
(laughs)
Arejay: I'm Arejay, and I play a drum in Halestorm... or two. And, I've been around for a while. I'm eighteen, and I turn nineteen on April 1st, and I like presents and squirrels and cranberry juice.
Lzzy: Okay! Thank you, Arejay. I'll be the straight man here - I'm Lzzy Hale, co-founder of the band. The band's been around for eight years... I play guitar and I'm the lead vocalist. I'm the token girl of the band.
Arejay: She's the songwriter.
AAM: Who writes the music?
Lzzy: Here's how it usually goes: I'll birth the song, so to speak - it'll still be in utero when I have it - some chords, some melody, and lyrics… the basis of the song. I bring it to the guys, and everybody puts in their two cents - it becomes what you see on stage. It's hysterical. We were just talking about it last night... about what I put down. I have two four-track recorders, and what I put down is my quarter of the band - my one-quarter of the band. It all pieces together. We were talking about it and describing it as bricks - you're building a house. You know what I mean? A song is a house. I have one brick, or a window - either way. I dig the metaphors, man!
AAM: Without getting into all the names or being genre-specific, you guys are rock. There are no frills or alternative element to Halestorm's music. It's just really good, driving rock and roll.
Lzzy: I think that's the best compliment that we've received... everyone's trying to put us into something else.
AAM: Lzzy, in the song, “It's Not You”-- who is that line aimed at?
Lzzy: That's an interesting story. I was actually writing that song - in the early stages - before the “it's not you” came about, and a friend of mine was over, a very conceited friend of mine - one of those friends that hangs around, that you've known forever, and they always want to date you, but it's just never going to work - kind of thing. So, I'm saying, “I'm in love with somebody... found somebody who completes me”, and he's like, “Is that about me?” And I'm like, “No, it's not you.” (laughs) It's a very tongue-in-cheek song, and it's fun to start the night out with that because you think it's going to be a love song, and it's really not. It's just very sarcastic and very tongue-in-cheek.
AAM: Do these guys just drive you nuts on the road?
Lzzy: Never... (laughs) - of course. Well, considering one of them is my little brother, yeah.
AAM: Did you go to Disneyland today?
Lzzy: No, we don't have any time. Someday we'll have to come back to see Disneyland.
AAM: So you're home is in Pennsylvania?
Lzzy: Yeah. Arejay and I live in York - Joe lives in my basement most of the time... sometimes with this brother in Wilmington, Delaware, and Joe lives in Philadelphia.
AAM: York is the Harley Davidson town, right?
Joe: Live...
Josh: Fuel...
AAM: That's right. Hey, who is Live's singer? Jeff Kowalski?
Joe: His name is Ed. [Kowalczyk]
AAM: I love that dude's singing, man.
Josh: They're a great band. I loved the shit out of that CD in fifth grade.
AAM: Fifth grade! For chrissakes, you guys are young.
Lzzy: Yeah, I'm twenty-two, Arjay's 18, and these guys are twenty-three and twenty-two.
AAM: It's a good time to be in a band.
Lzzy: It's a good time to be on the road, plugging our unofficial release.
Joe: I don't think we could think of anything that we'd rather be doing right now.
Lzzy: Every couple of months it gets better and better, something else will happen and we'll take whatever the next step is. It keeps moving, and that's all we want to do--is keep moving forward. We just got signed in June, to Atlantic Records, and that was a step, you know? It took us eight years to get to that point... and now we're taking the next step, trying to get an album out. And if something else comes up we'll have to do that, too.
The trailer door opens
AAM: There's Beth Hale. [Halestorm tour manager] Is this an easy group to manage?
Beth Hale: Terrible. Oh my God! No, they're awesome.
Lzzy: She has to say that... we pay her.
AAM: What kind of music were you fed when you were younger?
Lzzy: For me, it was a lot of classic rock. I grew up on a lot of Janice Joplin, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, and Vanilla Fudge. My Dad was in bands, he was a bass player...he was all about Deep Purple for a long time. What got Arejay and I completely inspired - we watched Vanilla Fudge's performance of “Keep Me Hangin' On” (Lzzy starts to sing Set me free why dontcha babe...). Was that on Ed Sullivan? I don't know what it was... it was just one those things that got us all excited. We decided we wanted to do it, entered ourselves in a talent show (laughs). Dare I make the joke? Should I make the joke?
AAM: You gotta make the joke.
Lzzy: We lost to a dancing cowgirl.
Joe: That's a joke? (laughs)
Lzzy: Well, okay, it's not a joke. It's the truth...
Josh: It's the painful truth.
Lzzy: It's the painful truth. That's what I should have said.
AAM: And you took the anger from that defeat and turned it into rock.
Josh: That song, where she sings I'm in love with somebody [“It's Not You”] - it's about the cowgirl.
(laughs)
AAM: It's a very obscure, metaphorical thing about the cowgirl.
Arejay: Yeehaw!
Lzzy: But, yeah... we grew up on a lot of classic rock. I know Joe is a huge fan of
the Beatles.
Joe: And Led Zeppelin.
AAM: Joe, who is the guitarist that made you think “Hey I want to play guitar?”
Joe: I don't know... I started out with Nirvana. Who I really respect now is Jeff Buckley, George Harrison and Jimmy Page. I like Stevie Ray Vaughan, a lot of blues.
AAM: What about you, Arejay?
Arejay: When I first saw The Beatles video, when they first came to America - their first Ed Sullivan performance - and I saw Ringo on the riser... I wanted to be the next Ringo. And, of course, my Dad raised me a lot on Keith Moon, John Bonham, and even old-schoolers like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich.
AAM: I notice that you hit the shit out of those things. I can see a lot of classic rock influences in your approach to playing live.
Arejay: Yeah, I think I like to keep a combination of the older classic rock, like Keith Moon, but I also like to listen to listen to hip-hop once in a while, like The Roots, shit like that.
Lzzy: Yeah, I think we all really like real music, and I hate the whole retro band thing, you know, because it's so fake. It's not that we're trying to be classic rock; it's just that back then it rocked. I missed all of that, I wish that I could be in the 70's, and the 80's was hysterically fun - Arejay and I watched a lot of Cinderella videos. The rock has died somewhere.
AAM: It's almost a bold move - you going out like this without some schlock, without make-up. You're going out for the love of the music.
Lzzy: I'm so glad to be doing something that I love.
AAM: Lzzy, I heard that a couple weeks ago you cut yourself while playing on stage and bled profusely, but you kept on playing.
AAM: That's total rock and roll... so Sex Pistols circa 1977...
Lzzy: I must have hit a vein somewhere... cut it on a string.
AAM: You guys are goof-offs and you're not doped up and liquored up, yet.
Lzzy: We don't do any drugs at all. We hardly drink. We're such dorks, it's so funny - we'd rather around with a guitar, with everybody and like, sing Jeff Buckley songs.
Joe: Bunch of hippies, man.
Lzzy: Well, it's not even a hippie thing... even a karaoke bar is fun, but I'd rather not get blasted every night.
Beth Hale: It's hard to keep up with Seether and Shinedown - you don't even want to try (laughs).
AAM: Those guys are alcohol fueled.
Lzzy: They sweat tequila and vodka.
AAM: Drinking is a good thing, but if you take it overboard you're just another pig. (Gnarly injects his opinion, again)
Lzzy: Well, to us that's kinda done. They did that in excess in the 80's and all that. That was the scene and that was the time.
Josh: Now it's just cliché.
Lzzy: Right now it's just real cliché... it's like you're almost embarrassed.
Joe: It's not a huge deal. This is a different scene, you know? Some people drink and that's totally cool. We've hung out with them and drank our asses off, too.
Josh: If you got a day off the next day and the situation is right... we probably won't drink for the next week because our stomachs aren't used to that.
AAM: Because you have a big sister, Lzzy on board - not to mention Beth, do you guys find it hard to cut loose the way you'd want to on the road?
AAM: Because Lzzy's like one of the crew?
Josh: I like having a Mom and sister-type thing. It keeps you in line... keeps you in check. You don't want to do stupid shit.
AAM: You don't light an occasional fart or something like that.
Lzzy: Oh, come on. Oh, wait a minute...
AAM: Do you light them, Lzzy?
Lzzy: No, I haven't lit em yet. They promised that they'd initiate me if the timing is right and someone has a lighter.
AAM: Don't do it in flannel pajamas - that's my tip for you, speaking from personal experience.
(laughs)
Josh: This bus has been completely drenched in hellish stench.
Joe: Arejay's the trash man. His farts smell like trash.
AAM: That figures. It's the drummer, usually. Where are you guys getting airplay?
Beth Hale: There's no push for this EP. The push is going to be when they put out the full album.
Joe: Our EP isn't available in the stores; it's only available at the shows right now.
Lzzy: There are a couple stations that are actually playing it.
Beth Hale: The biggest radio station in the country is playing it right now in Detroit.
AAM: So, you're anticipating a good amount of success with the upcoming album after you lay down the tracks?
Beth Hale: With this one they're selling approximately two-hundred EP's at every show.
Lzzy: So far, so good. For a demo, and being a band that no one's ever heard of - we've gotten a really good response and we're very thankful for that. We don't know... we love what we do, but it's a whole different level when other people are really into it and start basically saying back to you what you hope they see.
AAM: That alone has to be one of the main reasons why you're in this.
Joe: Before Halestorm was ever an Atlantic Records band, I had only been in the band three years. Even before I was in the band these guys were doing two-hundred, two hundred and fifty shows a year. We played more around the Northeast region... more shows than we do just because we're signed, but even if we didn't have all this going on we'd still be playing in bars. It's about going out and rocking... having fun.
Arejay: We got really lucky to have a good team behind us.
Lzzy: Just keep going. There's something to be said for being the last one standing or just keeping your band together. There are so many great bands that we saw over the past eight years now that got to that three year mark and be like, “Oh, we're not signed. Okay, bye.” First of all it's not about getting signed, and second why would you give up after three years. Like, we were just starting to figure out... I don't know... we're still trying to figure it out.
Story by Charlie Steffens, aka Gnarly Charlie
